Blog Post

Bitcoin has managed to dominate the cryptocurrency market ever since its inception. Besides being the most popular cryptocurrency, it’s also the most expensive crypto in the world. Its price skyrocketed back in the last quarter of 2017 where it nearly breached the $20,000 mark. Most users adopt it as an investment asset by hodling it, but much of its hype originates from the fact that you can possibly make a good profit by trading it (you could also lose a lot). This is the reason why a majority of Bitcoin transactions take place on exchange platforms. Other than being a trading commodity, Bitcoin can be spent in various online merchant shops across the world such as Overstock and Expedia, fulfilling its original purpose of being a peer-to-peer payment system.

With a set of unique properties, Bitcoin offers what no other payment system has offered before… decentralization. This means that no one actually owns or controls Bitcoin. It’s also easy to verify, hard to earn, and limited in supply. Thus, the high demand. Despite the many advantages to society, Bitcoin has also been criticized for its activities in fuelling illegal activities, high price volatility, high energy consumption, and theft from exchanges. Its legal status varies from country to country and remains undefined or changing in many of them. Despite all these, there has been some interesting Bitcoin activity in the market recently. Below we take a closer look at some of these activities.

Bitcoin Price Movements

Bitcoin has been on the rebound after sharply dropping below $6,000. Chances are that mainstream investors had their confidence rocked due to the overwhelming instances of exchange hacks that took place in the previous month of June. As of the 24th of June, 2018, the price of Bitcoin hit a yearly low of $5,825 entering the $5,000 region for the first time since November 2017. At the time of writing this article, the 9th of July, 2018, the coin has seen some major gains, resting at a price of $6,765.15 with a 24-hour trading volume of $3,470,290,000 and a market cap of $115, 952,046,122.

While this may represent the chance to purchase Bitcoins at a rather discounted price, all purchases should be considered high-risk. The price of Bitcoin remains extremely volatile and gives many contradicting signals and so does the trader attitude in the market. Some traders remain bearish while others remain bullish. This recent price trend echoes the sentiments of crypto-investor and researcher Willy Woo. Willy gave the opinion that extreme price volatility in the market coupled with low trading volume would most likely lower the Bitcoin price to a low of $5,500. While it certainly didn’t hit the target, it came amazingly close to breaching the $5,500 price prediction.

Bitcoin Price Predictions

Bitcoin began the year on a high note but as the year continued, the Bitcoin mania slowly faded out with prices declining below $6,000. Due to this, many experts have weighed their opinions on whether Bitcoin will continue to decline in value or surge past its January high. Nicolas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research believes that Bitcoin is an absolute bubble. He bases his sentiments on the fact that Google searches for Bitcoin were significantly lower than those of Q3 2017 which represents a diminished interest in Bitcoin. He asserts that the only way for prices to spike would be for new adopters to join the Bitcoin market enough to raise the price upwards.

Ran Neu-Ner, an expert in the field, explains that now is a good time for buying Bitcoin. Although he believes that the prices of Bitcoin will continue going down, he states that it is a great opportunity for crypto-enthusiasts to purchase Bitcoin. He also states that in 2017, there were around 27,000 blockchain startups which are lower compared to 28,000 blockchain startups seen in 2018. Mohamed El-Erian, the chief advisor at Allianz, states that Bitcoin is a buy below $5,000. Mohamed also stated that he sees a future where cryptocurrencies are strong but not without governmental involvement.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder, and CEO of Bitmex, predicts that there is a chance that Bitcoin could hit $50,000. He shares that as the prices of Bitcoin is dropping, there is less price volatility. In order for Bitcoin to possibly hit a high of $50,000, Arthur believes that there must be more price volatility involved. He also adds that positive regulatory decisions are key towards the $50k region. Tom Lee, Managing Partner and Head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, predicts the price of Bitcoin to hit $25,000 by the end of the year. He backs up his claim by stating that Bitcoin mining is becoming more difficult and costly. A limited supply will ultimately drive the price of Bitcoin upwards.

Bitcoin News

The Bitcoin alert key was publicly revealed for the first time recently. This was done by two Bitcoin core developers, Andrew Chow and Bryan Bishop. The key had never been published before and it was rumored that in August 2016, only three people were known to have the key, Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin Andresen, and Michael Marquardt. The key was to be made public in May 2017 but the process was postponed to a later date. The key was kept private due to the danger that its disclosure would pose to cryptocurrencies that used an older version of the Bitcoin code. The announcement of the key now diminishes any claims by anyone that they are Satoshi Nakamoto. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains unknown to this date.

Bitcoin’s price has remained volatile for the most part of the year. It is likely to remain volatile throughout the rest of the year as well. The price will likely continue oscillating and fluctuating rapidly depending on the markets’ opinion of Bitcoin. The majority of cryptocurrency experts have positive remarks regarding the future of Bitcoin, the blockchain, and cryptocurrencies at large. We have the same attitude. Therefore, knowing that the prices of cryptocurrencies are likely to remain volatile, we encourage you to check out our gold and blockchain-based products on our main website. Particularly, our gold price-backed token, the DinarCoin.